Dear Editor:
RE: Metro Vancouver Board Launches North Shore Sewage Plant Audit Process
I read your article and share many of the concerns expressed therein. I am appalled by the comments of numerous officials in your article who appear not to understand the need for an appropriate “audit” into this 457 per cent overrun fiasco for an uncompleted project. If we cannot find out with certainty, and fix what went wrong here, all future Metro Vancouver projects are at serious risk.
The Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant project is budgeted at $9.9 billion. If it overruns the same percentage as the North Shore plant, expect a final price of $45 billion. Yet many politicians see little need for an audit! If they already know all the answers, how about telling the rest of us!
Judging by the press reports, the Metro Vancouver head does not have much idea what type or number of people they need to investigate the North Shore treatment plant fiasco. I do. And it sure is not one person, and definitely not a real estate person, or a lawyer alone – that would be TOTALLY under gunning the effort.
In 2000, I was the team leader (the only English/ Spanish speaker on our working team) for the nine-month investigation of claims against a Latin American company by a multi-national joint venture, which had hired an EPC (Engineer Procure Construct) firm to build a US$1 billion-plus plant for the Latin American company. We were less than US$50 million over budget due to changes in scope, force majeure, etc. Our objective was to recover that amount from the Latin American company, by agreement or by international arbitration. Our team was based in Latin America.
Our international claims team consisted of two Japanese financial people, a small team of bilingual local lawyers, two engineers knowledgeable in EPC contracts (myself and an American), reporting to the bilingual leader of the JV company, and a few others. This was an investigation over a $50-million overrun, not billions! An agreement was reached.
The Metro Vancouver team should not contain Metro reps with authority over the independent team, but that team must have access to Metro personnel at all levels. Access to the EPC contractor would be helpful.
A team such as I suggest would be tasked with finding out what went wrong to create this massive overrun on an as yet incomplete project, recommending changes to avoid another such fiasco, and reclaiming any monies due from the EPC contractor.
John Hunter
North Vancouver
